which they
catch as they dash through the air, and can also break off dry twigs for
nest-building without stopping--sometimes seizing the little sticks in
their bills and sometimes in their claws, which are much stronger than
those of Swallows."

"How do they make the sticks stay in the chimney? What do they set them
on, and how do they perch while they are building?" asked Nat, all in
one breath.

"Do you remember how the little Brown Creeper propped himself against
the tree when he looked for insects?"

"Yes," said Rap; "he stuck his sharp tail-feathers into the bark and
made a bracket of himself."

"The Swift does this also when he fastens twigs together for a nest.
They are glued together into a little openwork basket, and gummed to the
wall of the chimney, with a sticky fluid which comes from his own
mouth."

"I've got a lot of old nests that fell down the chimney after a storm
last winter that wet the glue and made them come unstuck," said Joe;
"and I'll give you each one. If you look up the hole where the kitchen
fireplace was, you can see the new nests quite plain; for the birds
don't build them very near the top."

"Be careful of loose stones!" called the Doctor; but in a flash four
young heads had disappeared in the ruins of the great fireplace, where
three pairs of trousers and a short brown linen skirt alone were
visible.

In a little while they had some milk and strawberries; and before they
drove on Joe's father promised to take him up to Orchard Farm to see
the birds in the Doctor's wonder room, as soon as haying should be over.
To the children's astonishment they found it was half-past six o'clock;
they had been at the farm an hour and a half, and could not stop again
until they reached the wood lane where their uncle had promised to look
for the Pewee's nest.

"Stay here, little people, and ask all the questions you like of Olive,"
said the Doctor, when they had reached the lane; "for I shall be able to
find the nest more easily if you do not frighten the birds by talking."

"Pewee, pewee, pe-e-er!" cried a little voice.

"There he is, crying 'peek-a-boo' again," said Dodo. "Please, Olive,
won't you tell us the table for the Chimney Swift now?"

"Certainly; and there is plenty of light yet if you wish to write it
down."

The Chimney Swift

Length five and a half inches.

Sooty brown. Sharply pointed tail-feathers.

A Summer Citizen of eastern North America from Florida to the Fur